An Impossible Impostor (Veronica Speedwell, #7)

by Deanna Raybourn

In our experience, anarchists might claim to have the good of the people at heart, but they were often quite untidy in their methods.

It was far beyond the time when women should take their seat at the table of international politics, I believed. Unlike their masculine counterparts, women were far less likely to fling themselves headlong into war, to begin with.

Stoker, being a male of the species, could not help occasionally erupting into irrationality. I had long observed that when a man does so, it is simplest to treat him with the same calm good humor one might employ when coaxing a stubborn horse or a slightly backwards child.

“I am merely wrestling with a question of spirit. I fear I have become tame.” He snorted, marking his place in the book with a thumb. “You? Tame? My dearest Veronica, it would take a better man than I to accomplish such a feat.”

For all of his robust enjoyment of such activities, he occasionally demonstrates the fastidious prudery of a spinster aunt.

“One must question the taste if not the actual intelligence of a woman whose greatest interest is painted bowls of fruit.”

It was astonishing, I mused, how often people claimed to be honest when they were simply making a virtue of excessive rudeness.

As a woman of science, I prized intellect and reason. I had always attempted to keep my emotions in check whenever they threatened to interfere with logic. I gave vent to them when it was acceptable to do so, of course. I succumbed to laughter, to whimsy, to affection, to desire. I had been exalted in my happiness and occasionally maddened to frustration. But I had only rarely permitted myself to be truly angry. Anger robbed one of sense and perspective, I had always thought. And while I might hone the blade of my tongue, it was always in the service of impatience, annoyance, irritation.

Stoker’s natural sympathy with women was a dangerous thing. From infants in the pram to women with half a foot in the grave, they fell at his feet, swooning.

You have health and beauty and a wit so sharp a man might cut himself and think the bleeding a privilege.”

And yet it was in England that I met the man who was more myself than I was. I had observed before that if the rest of the world’s folk were made of mud, Stoker and I were quicksilver, able to catch one another’s thoughts as easily as a swallowtail may be netted on the wing. We did not require one another, for neither of us was deficient. But we enhanced one another, we bettered one another.

“You are not fond of your nephew and nieces?” “I loathe the little horrors,”

It might be lonely at times, if I were entirely honest, but how much better to be alone with my dignity intact than at the mercy of my relations!

Self-loathing is a habit, and one I could not afford to indulge.

“There is nothing more political than the ability to take care of one’s own people.”

Division from Stoker, in any form, was like an amputation of the soul, and I would do anything to bridge the abyss between us.

He was filthy and looked every inch the disreputable pirate. And he was the loveliest thing I had ever seen.